Weaving Not Drowning

Sarah Simpkin
4 min readFeb 8, 2021

In Homer’s Odyssey, while Penelope waits for her husband Odysseus to return, she weaves. To keep her suitors at bay, she tells them she’s weaving a funeral shroud for Laertes, her father-in-law, and promises to choose one of them when it’s finished. She weaves by day and unpicks the shroud each night, until she’s discovered, outed, forced to make a choice, and so devises an archery competition that only her returning husband can win. When we had to translate this section of the poem at school, I always saw the needlework as the point for Penelope, not holding out for a man.

A few years later, at art college, my tutor suggested I look at Janine Antoni’s 1993 installation, Slumber. While the artist slept in the gallery, her eye movements were recorded by a polysomnogram. By day, she sat at a loom and wove threads from her nightie according to the pattern that emerged from the machine. She gradually made herself a blanket to sleep under, in a sense giving form to her unconscious.

As we have been confined to our homes during the pandemic, I have thought about this work, and that of other artists that have confined themselves to a gallery. Chris Burden’s Bed Piece, where he lay alone in a single bed in the gallery for twenty-two days of 1972 — a less cosy version of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘bed-ins for peace’. Vito Acconci’s Seedbed, where he masturbated in a cramped hole under a ramp on the floor, might resonate with some people’s experience of lockdown. Or the three cubes that Marina Abramović lived inside for her 2002 gallery residence, The House with the Ocean View, accessed by ladders with knives for rungs.

What interests me about Antoni’s installation is not the feat of endurance, notions of women’s work, or the elevation of craft to high art. It’s the idea of needlework as a kind of watchful waiting; marking the passage of time in stitches. It is a ritual, which is about time and care, for oneself and others. It reminds me of mothers and wives knitting ganseys for fishermen at sea, with intricate patterns that showed which village they came from, if they were ever washed up. The practice of ‘sewing the Buddha’s robe’ to encourage a mindful state of disassociation from time and thoughts. Or volunteers knitting warm clothes for displaced refugees. There are proven therapeutic benefits to working with your hands to distract the mind, particularly for those with dementia or anxiety. There are also practical ones. I recently came across the Disabled Soldiers’ Embroidery Industry, which turned a convalescent hobby into employment for soldiers otherwise unable to work after the First World War. Today, in east London, the enterprise charity, Stitches in Time uses sewing to bring people together to support some of the most marginalised groups in Tower Hamlets.

As people have been forced to isolate during the pandemic, a resurgence in amateur crafts has followed. Everyone I knew seemed to be baking, or watching people bake, sewing, or watching others sew, or competitively make pots or blow glass. On WhatsApp, we traded links to art activities for home-schooled children. Throughout the summer, I watched my neighbour sit in the garden and work through a difficult piece of Sashiko embroidery. The local pound shop ran out of cheap chunky yarn. In 2020, Hobbycraft’s sewing sales increased by 178%. We were being asked to sit on our sofas, while frontline workers faced fear, illness and death. As I sat on it, I started my own cottage industry.

A few years ago, I had managed to get hold of a book called Filography by Douglas K. Dix. It’s a how-to guide to making the thread sculptures, or pin art boards that were popular in the 1970s — we were still making them in school in the 80s, and I remembered enjoying the process. I decided to make this my first lockdown project. In early spring, when the supermarket shelves were emptying of pasta and toilet roll, I updated my stocks of yarn and materials. Almost a year later, we have two boards of pins and thread gathering dust on our wall: a yacht race and an abstract pair of corners.

Practice filography board, April 2020

I sewed masks. I made scarves to send to my parents for Christmas. As I knitted, I found myself thinking about them; this emotional connection felt as meaningful as our calls and occasional exchange of parcels. They said they liked them, although they call dad’s his cravat, owing to its unusual length. I made more scarves. I wove two small round rugs: one from a bag of clothes I was throwing out, the other from a bag of offcuts my friend, Gemma let me have.

As our confinement stretches further into 2021, I keep on sitting on my sofa, with my pins, wool, bits of wood and fabric, stitching and joining them together with varying degrees of success. Waiting, like Penelope and so many others, to be with our friends and loved ones again.

Detail of rug woven from fabric scraps — second attempt, 2020

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